Hunters Be Damned

The page one headline below the fold in the Star-Tribune was as follows: "New target: Famale hunters." Yes, and if I were looking for a companion, girlfriend, mate, or just plain sex buddy, I would certainly demand that she be able to kill, for no reason, at least one, probably more, of the sundry creatures besides humans that "share" the earth with us. Yes, she'd have to be able to trap, shoot, stab, hook, or even kill with an arrow some gentle creature covered with fur. Maybe she could start with cats, since there are so damned many of them!

When I saw that headline, I was disgusted. I know I live in macho-man, hunter country here in Minnesota, but do we need more killers, more takers of life of any kind, than we already have? I don't think so. Today we need more people in this country who don't want to kill anything. This headline took me back to my childhood in Alabama, from where each summer, my grandmother and I would drive to where my grandfather was working as a brickmason supervisor repairing blast furnaces in steel mills all across this nation of ours.

One particular trip took us to Lynchburg, Virginia, no doubt the home of many hunters bumping into each other. My grandmother and I went to the movies one night, as my grandfather was much too tired after a day of hot, difficult work. And the movie we saw was Bambi. I was 7 years old, and I probably don't need to tell you how much it affected me. But I will anyway! Afterwards, as she and I sat across from each other in a booth in a drugstore (do you remember soda fountains in drugstores?), she noticed I was very quiet. When she asked what was wrong with me, I burst into tears and blurted, "They killed Bambi's mother." And I didn't become a hunter. I recently saw a "personality" in this country say the same thing, that Bambi kept him from killing animals for sport. Good for him.

I have two cousins, decent human beings, who live in North Alabama and whose mother was my favorite aunt, my biological father's sister. I was in the older cousin's home many years ago, and I noticed a book of Bible stories for children sitting on an end table. Then I looked up and saw one of the several deer heads he had mounted and hanging on his wall. To me it was incongruous, to say the least. Just after I moved to Los Angeles in 1987, I was taking a course at The American Film Institute titled "Writing About the Movies," a course designed to help us evaluate books and movie scripts, to learn which ones (we hoped) to recommend for a film. Much to my great pleasure, one of the speakers' father had produced Bambi for Walt Disney, and I was able to tell her just how much the movie had meant to me. It was one of those magical moments that we need more of.

The number of hunters, however, does not need to increase! Hunters be damned!